India Denies Visas to U.S. Panel on Religious Freedom Citing 'Prejudice'

India has denied visas to a team from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which had requested entry to India to assess religious liberties in the country, Reuters reported on Thursday.

In a June 1 letter to an Indian legislator, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar explained that the government rejected the visit by the U.S. panel because it did not believe it was appropriate for a foreign body to determine the legitimacy of Indian citizens’ rights.

“We have denied visa[s] to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom, as we do not see the locus standi of a foreign entity like USCIRF to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens’ constitutionally protected rights,” Jaishankar wrote in his letter, addressed to a lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party.

According to Reuters, in April, the USCIRF released a report recommending that the U.S. impose sanctions against Indian government officials from Modi’s ruling party after it passed a new refugee sanctuary law that fast-tracks allowing Christians, Sikhs, and other religious minorities to reside permanently in India. The law excludes Muslims because Muslims are the majority in most of the countries that neighbor India, and Muslims are responsible for high levels of persecution in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. The commission claimed the law was a violation of religious freedom.

The USCIRF also called for India to be designated a “country of particular concern,” a label the U.S. State Department uses to describe nations it views as having severely violated religious freedoms. The report again cited increased discrimination against the Muslim minority population in India as the reasoning behind its recommendation.

A report by the Indian Express published on Thursday explained that India felt unduly targeted by the USCIRF report in April and that this contributed to the government’s quashing of the panel’s visit. The newspaper pointed out that the report drew repeated attention to India’s Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah, and his past reference to migrants in India as “termites” to be eradicated.

“[The] USCIRF has been known to make prejudiced, inaccurate, and misleading observations regarding the state of religious freedom in India. We do not take cognizance of these pronouncements and have repudiated such attempts to misrepresent information related to India,” Jaishankar wrote in his June 1 letter.

The foreign minister added that India “will not accept any external interference or pronouncement on matters related to our sovereignty and the fundamental rights of our citizens that are guaranteed by the [Indian] Constitution.”